


Losing a Beloved

by velocitygrass



Series: Be loved [2]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Grieving, Homophobia, OC POV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-11-09
Updated: 2006-11-09
Packaged: 2017-10-18 12:29:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/188902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/velocitygrass/pseuds/velocitygrass
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Now she was gone and he was left alone with a son, who'd always been more Marie's than his.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Losing a Beloved

**Author's Note:**

> This is a bit of background from John's father's POV.

When Marie died, Joseph Sheppard didn't think he could bear it. He had fallen in love with her the moment he laid eyes on her and he had loved her to the moment she exhaled her last breath and beyond.

Now she was gone and he was left alone with a son, who'd always been more Marie's than his. His wife had understood how to handle him. Joseph could see he was suffering. Of course he would. He'd loved his mother so much.

But just like for his own suffering there was nothing he could do for John.

When John became more quiet at home, Joseph thought that was his way of grieving and growing up. John was 14 now, tall and gangly and locked himself in his room or the bathroom quite often. It was a normal thing. Joseph was sure Marie would have agreed.

When John started sneaking out of the house, Joseph grounded him and told him that while he understood that boys wanted some adventures, John was going too far and he surely knew that his mother would have disapproved. He had watched his wife scold John and he tried to do it the same way, but it was no use. The sneaking didn't stop, so Joseph started pretending he didn't notice.

When he found out that John had been beaten up at school, he rushed to the hospital where they told him John would be fine, he slept now. So Joseph let him rest and went to school to ask what had happened because his son was a good boy and even if he'd had a hard time after his mother's death he wasn't a bully, he didn't get into fist fights.

They told him who had beaten John up and Joseph went to one of the father's, a friend of his and when he heard from him, what his son had witnessed, he didn't _want_ to believe it, but he did. John had been on his knees, his friend's son had said, in an alley behind that bar, yes, he'd been drinking, but he'd never ever do what John did.

Joseph went to the hospital to visit his son. He wanted to ask what John was thinking, he was fifteen and there was no telling what those men could do to him, to a helpless child. But Joseph couldn't ask that. His son was smart, he had to know that what he was doing was wrong and dangerous. "I hope, you've learned your lesson," he said, because he did. He hoped that John would stop sneaking out, would find friends, would look for a boy his own age, instead of some grown man, who did things to boys in dark alleys.

John had just looked at him, face set in stone and had answered "Yes, sir."

But he hadn't. He still came home late at night sometimes. His clothes reeked of alcohol. And when he looked at his father, Joseph felt as if he was screaming something at the top of his lungs, but not in any language that he could understand.

Joseph asked how school was, told him he had done good, when he brought home As, but still, John seemed to grow farther and farther away from him.

One day, when John was nearly 17, he came home, drunk, a large white stain was on his shirt and on his arms the fingerprints of large hands were still faintly visible. John stared at him, his eyes saying "look at me, look at who I am" and when Joseph looked at his son then, he couldn't recognize him.

In that moment he accepted that when his wife had died, he had lost his son, too, and started grieving again.


End file.
